Tightrope walk for Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, it seems, will have to execute a tightrope walk to run his “fragile” government, thanks to an intense rivalry between two factional leaders in the ruling Congress here, Digvijay Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia.

That the shadow boxing between the “traditional” rivals has held back the formation of state ministry for over a week was a pointer to the challenges ahead for septuagenarian Mr Nath.

The chief minister has so far failed to bring the warring leaders to the negotiation table to end the confrontation between them over induction of their loyalist MLAs as well as allocation of plum portfolios to them, a senior Congress leader in the know of internal affairs of the party disclosed to this newspaper here on Friday.

“Both the leaders want important portfolios for their loyal MLAs, besides a lion’s share in the ministry. The exercise to form ministry has begun a day after results of the November 28 Assembly elections were announced on December 11.

“Ten days have already passed, but there is still no sign of end to the impasse over the ministry formation,” he said. “Hopefully, the imbroglio does not last long,” he added.

Shadow boxing between the rival Congress leaders was also witnessed during the formation of various election committees in the party in the pre-poll period with both the leaders sparing no efforts to accommodate maximum number of their loyalists in these panels.

The fractured mandate thrown by the November 28 Assembly elections has made Mr Nath’s task more challenging.

Congress has ended up securing just 114 seats, short of two seats to gain a simple majority, in a nail biting finish to the poll results and had to seek supports of one SP MLA, two BSP legislators and four Independents to form the government in the state.

Three factional leaders in Congress, Mr Singh, Mr Scindia and Mr Nath himself, have their share of loyalists in the Congress Legislature Party (CLP), although the scion of erstwhile Gwalior royal family Mr Scindia helped majority of his followers — 47 MLAs — get elected to the House, causing unease among his rivals in the party.

Forty-seven-year old Mr Scindia had staked claim to the chief minister’s post on the basis of strength of his loyalists in the CLP, but Mr Nath had outsmarted him to get the coveted post with the backing of Mr Singh, leading the rivalry between Mr Scindia and Mr Singh to reach a flash point.

“A fight-to-finish battle has literally begun between Mr Scindia and Mr Singh with both of them perceiving each other a threat to their political interest. Mr Nath has been wittingly or unwittingly caught in the crossfire between the two feuding leaders,” a senior party leader said.

Mr Singh, an astute politician as he is known, has won the seemingly first round of the ongoing one-upmanship battle with Mr Scindia by scuttling the latter’s efforts to elbow out Mr Nath to get the coveted post of chief minister.

Mr Nath was well aware of the fact that Mr Singh, too, has a key role to play in stability of his government.

Party sources said Mr Singh enjoyed loyalty of at least two dozen party MLAs.

Incidentally, Congress circle here is abuzz with speculations that the battle between Mr Scindia and Mr Singh may escalate in the coming days.

Mr Singh, if talks making rounds in the Congress circle here are to be believed, saw Mr Scindia a threat to advancement in the political career of his MLA son Jaivardan and appeared determined to keep the ex-Gwalior royal family scion out of state politics till his ward consolidated his position in Congress politics in MP.

Mr Scindia has a reason to worry. His late father Madhavrao Scindia was robbed of the opportunity to become chief minister of MP in 1993 allegedly due to Mr Singh’s machinations, the Scindia camp believed.

It is obviously a case of once bitten twice shy for Mr Scindia.
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